Thursday, June 25, 2009

International Politics Slows Full Deployment of DNSSEC

A growing number of generic top-level domains, including .gov and .org, are deploying DNS Security Extensions to help ensure the reliability of the Domain Name System. But full deployment of the extensions is moving at a glacial pace.

Part of the problem is the complexity of managing the cryptographic keys used to sign DNS data and authenticate queries and responses. But one Commerce Department official said another part of the problem is international concern about the United States controlling the Internet. In many cases, the challenges faced are diplomatic rather than technical. The official likened the process of bringing the international community on board to herding cats.

Commerce has put much of the job of managing the Internet into the hands of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit organization formed for that purpose. But Congress is unwilling to give up its oversight of a network the Defense Department originally created, and that worries some who see the Internet as a global resource.